Ten Things You Might Not Know About



Twelve Things You Might Not Know About

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

1. Lincoln and Douglas Had Been Debating For Over Twenty Years

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas first met in Vandalia, Illinois in the mid-1830s as young politicians and began encountering each other on the campaign trail by the end of the decade. They continued to clash occasionally during the 1840s and met famously for a few concurrent speeches during the 1854 campaign.

2. Douglas Was Nearly The Republican Candidate in 1858

By the end of 1857, Senator Stephen Douglas and President James Buchanan had reached a pivotal confrontation over the Lecompton Constitution or policy regarding the admission of Kansas as a slave or free state. The feud between leading Democrats encouraged many eastern Republicans to recruit Douglas into their party. Only the nomination of Lincoln by Illinois Republicans on June 16, 1858 halted the effort to make Douglas a Republican.

3. These Were The First Debates Between US Senate Candidates

During these years, state legislatures, not voters, selected U.S. senators (a fact that would not change until 1913 with ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment) so there had been no previous custom of nominating or defining official “candidates” for senate.

4. Lincoln Had Used the House Divided Metaphor Before

As early as 1843, Lincoln had used the biblical phrase “A house divided against itself cannot stand” as a warning to unify members of his political party.

5. Lincoln Challenged Douglas to Up To 50 Debates

According to historian Don E. Fehrenbacher, if Douglas had accepted Lincoln’s original debate proposal, there would have been up to 50 Lincoln-Douglas Debates, not just seven. Douglas agreed to seven “joint discussions” because there were nine congressional districts in the state at that time, and the two men had already spoken jointly in two of them.

6. Crowds at the Debates Doubled the Population of Several Towns

Attendance at the seven debates ranged from about one thousand people to upwards of 20,000 in towns or villages that sometimes had as few as several hundred permanent residents.

7. Short-Hand Stenographers Were Used for the First Time

Two Chicago newspapers employed rival short-hand stenographers to capture every word of the debates for their readers –a first in American political history. The Chicago Press & Tribune, a Republican newspaper, sent Robert R. Hitt. The Chicago Times, a Democratic newspaper, relied on James B. Sheridan and Henry Binmore for their transcripts.

8. Douglas Lost His Voice Near The End of the Campaign

By the end of the long campaign, which included dozens of more long speeches for each of the candidates besides the seven main debates, Stephen A. Douglas was hoarse and sick. Observers reported that only Lincoln seemed able to keep his voice and spirits intact.

9. Republicans Won the Popular Vote for Legislature in 1858

According to historian Allen Guelzo, out of 366,983 votes cast in the 1858 Illinois legislative elections, Republicans received 190,468 while Democratic candidates only received 166,374. There were also 9,951 votes for pro-Buchanan Democratic candidates. In other words, pro-Lincoln candidates won more than 24,000 votes than Democrats or nearly 52 percent of the popular vote. Yet Republicans did not control the Illinois General Assembly because not all state senate seats were up for election that year and because the apportionments of seats did not perfectly reflect the distribution of population.

10. After the Contest, Lincoln Was Confident, Not Depressed

There were several stories told years after the Lincoln-Douglas contest about how depressed Lincoln was after the debates, but in contemporary letters he sounds far more upbeat. “The question is not half-settled,” he wrote to several correspondents.

11. Lincoln Arranged to Have the Debates Published

During the year following the debates, Lincoln meticulously prepared a scrapbook of the campaign for publication by an Ohio printer. The publication of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, according to historian David Donald, became an antebellum best-seller and helped propel Lincoln toward the presidency.

12. Despite Their Differences, Douglas Backed Lincoln During War

Once the Civil War began and just weeks before he died in 1861 from typhoid fever, Stephen Douglas threw his support behind the war effort and his old rival and now president, Abraham Lincoln. “There can be no neutrals in this war,” Douglas said, “only patriots and traitors.”

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